In the prior art of exercise, a great emphasis was placed upon endurance and aerobics as the basis of "good" training. Thus, exercisers strove to achieve appropriate "target" heart rates during relatively prolonged sessions of rhythmic movement (20 to 60 or more continuous minutes).
It is also known in the art of exercise to emphasize strength training. Strength training as it is traditionally performed (low number of repetitions with heavy weights) tends to cause the muscle fibers involved to enlarge (hypertrophy). There is little beneficial effect upon the cardiovascular system. Indeed, it is thought by many that a preponderance of such training may produce certain adverse effects upon the heart itself as well as untoward effects upon the arterial blood pressure.
Efforts to increase the number of repetitions and to make weight training methods more continuous, etc., by having the exerciser move swiftly from one "station" to the next with only short pauses, have also failed to produce significant benefits with respect to endurance (aerobic) capacity. Thus subjects trained by the so-called "circuit" method, while achieving relatively high heart rates during the exercise, have not, generally speaking, increased their oxygen uptake capacity (work capacity) significantly over extended training periods.
These facts provoke the question as to whether or not strength oriented physical training methods can work toward the improvement of the cardiovascular system. This improvement would include such elements as slowing of the heart rate both at rest and at any greater workloads, usually lowering of the systemic blood pressure, along with various enzymatic and other metabolic changes that are readily measurable.
The crucial flaw in methods that attempt to couple strength and aerobic capacity may be their general failure to employ sufficient muscle mass during given exercises. Thus strength training methods typically work one or a few muscle groups at a time. The high heart rates achieved under those conditions do not represent the same physiologic events that general high heart rates during continuous (aerobic) exercise (jogging, brisk walking, swimming, rowing, bicycling) that employ a relatively large percentage of the body's muscle simultaneously provide.
One such method which has met with much greater success in achieving the development of strength and aerobic capacity concurrently uses the idea of converting a pair of individual dumbbells to specially designed hand weights. U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,351,526; 4,627,618 by L. Schwartz teach the development of strength during aerobic exercise by utilizing hand weights during bipedal movements such as jogging. The preferred method of exercising with the hand weights disclosed in the two patents to L. Schwartz is described in the publications entitled Heavyhands: The Ultimate Exercise and HeavyHands Walking, by Leonard Schwartz, M.D. published in 1982 and 1987, respectively. While these patents disclose methods which also are capable of coupling the development of strength and aerobic capacity, they are somewhat limited to work performed by the free motion of the legs and arms during locomotion.
Accordingly, there is usefulness for an exercise method that permits physical training of the body simultaneously for strength and aerobic capacity and which can be applied to all muscle groups of the body while remaining in one location and using body weight as the only resistance required. The entire bodyweight is ideally suited to serve as the resistance for strength-endurance training. This method is designed to allow for the simultaneous action of a great muscle mass in lifting the body repeatedly and over relatively prolonged periods of time. This combined work, which includes a large strength component, cannot be accomplished by any combination of muscle groups activated in sequence. The method lends itself to the careful design of combined movements and to the improvisation of such combined movements.